Imageability predicts the age of acquisition of verbs in Chinese children.
Verbs are harder to learn than nouns in English and in many other languages, but are relatively easy to learn in Chinese. This paper evaluates one potential explanation for these findings by examining the construct of imageability, or the ability of a word to produce a mental image. Chinese adults rated the imageability of Chinese words from the Chinese Communicative Development Inventory (Tardif et al., in press). Imageability ratings were a reliable predictor of age of acquisition in Chinese for both nouns and verbs. Furthermore, whereas early Chinese and English nouns do not differ in imageability, verbs receive higher imageability ratings in Chinese than in English. Compared with input frequency, imageability independently accounts for a portion of the variance in age of acquisition (AoA) of verb learning in Chinese and English.
Ma
Weiyi
W
School of Education, University of Delaware, Newark 19716, USA. weiyima@udel.edu
Golinkoff
Roberta Michnick
RM
Hirsh-Pasek
Kathy
K
McDonough
Colleen
C
Tardif
Twila
T
D000367:Age Factors; D044466:Asian People; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D007223:Infant; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D011446:Prospective Studies; D014706:Verbal Learning